Thieves World 8 – Soul of the City by Asprin, Robert

She reached out and braced herself, for a demon lover would come with contact:

One did have to pay as one went, even if one was Nisibis’s finest witch.

Her nail screeched into the high peaks’ clay, and a demon screeched into

existence between her knees, and a hellish gale whose like was known as wizard

weather up and down the land stretched from Sanctuary’s southernmost tip up

along the Ran-kan seaboard where the imperial ship was under way.

And everywhere men remarked that, even for wizard weather, the gale was fierce

and loud, and full of sounds the like of a goddess being raped in some forgotten

passion play.

Sanctuary promised nothing of the sort to Critias, who’d ridden downcountry at

an ungodly rate with Tempus and his inhuman consort, Jihan, daughter of the

primal power men called Stormbringer (when they were so unlucky as to have to

call Him anything at all).

The ride-across No Man’s Land, a shortcut full of shades and mirages through a

desert the party shouldn’t have been able to cross in twice the time-hadn’t been

the sort of trip Crit liked. It was too fast, too easy, too full of magic-or

whatever the equivalent was when power was fielded not by a human mage, but by

Jihan, daughter of Stormbringer, lord of wind and wave.

Now that they’d nearly reached the town, it was too late for Crit to ask his

commander questions-whether, as rumor had it, Abarsis had really appeared to the

Riddler in Theron’s palace; why, even if that were true, Tempus had seen fit to

split his forces: the three of them were worth more than the score of fighters